


It All Works Out

by dinolaur



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 10:37:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinolaur/pseuds/dinolaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some ups, there are some downs, there are some impossible hurdles, but eventually, it all works out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It All Works Out

It’s only natural that their parents become friends, considering Stiles and Scott have been just about glued to each other’s hips since the first minute of day care. Since Stiles and Scott do everything together, there’s a lot of overlap time that their parents just sort of have to be around each other. And for the most part—certain a Mr. McCall notwithstanding—they get along really well.

Melissa was a pillar of strength and compassion when Mrs. Stilinski was dying, always making sure the Stilinski house was well stocked with food and that Stiles was getting around where he needed to be. It takes John a good few years, but eventually he’s able to thank her for that.

Being a single parent is hard, especially with kids like Stiles and Scott, who seem to always be getting into trouble in some way or another. You’d think that the sheriff having a personal interest in you would curb that, but apparently you’d be wrong. For the most part, Stiles and Scott are good kids. They both know that Stiles is the one who instigates the trouble more often than not, but they also know that a lot of it comes from his ADHD. The boy can’t sit still and just gravitates to high risk situations. And Scott is always right behind him.

Melissa complains that they’re going to give her gray hairs, and John points out that they’ve already given him wrinkles. They both feel like they could probably make a case with the IRS to claim the other’s child as a tax deduction.

They laugh that it’s a coping mechanism, but as the boys get older and are okay with being on their own later into the night, they sometimes meet up after their shifts for drinks and, once every blue moon, for dancing. They complain about the stresses of their jobs. They worry about their children. They miss having someone to come home to every night.

Melissa is very glad to be rid of her ex-husband. He was a low-life, and he treated Scott abysmally, but the lack of an extra income sometimes hits them hard. John has never taken off his wedding ring, and he keeps a bottle of Jack in a cabinet in his office that no one is allowed to have the key to.

Rarely, Melissa tries to date. The results are usually disastrous. John hasn’t looked at another woman, but he’s there with a margarita the size of their heads to assure Melissa that eventually it’ll work out. He believes it will for her. For himself, he’s not so sure.

They go out and get good and plastered after they’re individually sat down by their sons and told about the existence of werewolves and how deeply involved in the local pack the boys are. They both want to march down to that house in the woods and tear into Derek Hale. John thinks he’d like to forego arresting him and just shoot him. Melissa agrees and goes into some rather frightening details about amputations.

But the boys both defend Derek’s character. Sort of. They say he’s definitely rough around the edges and could totally use a personality rehaul, but at the end of the day, he’d do whatever was necessary to keep the pack safe. And the boys are pack.

John thinks that at least he has it a little better than Melissa here. Stiles is still human. But then Stiles blurts out that he’s actually sort-of-kind-of-ok-totally Derek’s mate, and, yeah, he’s definitely going to shoot Hale. In the kneecaps first. Or maybe the groin.

``

When the boys leave for college, it’s bittersweet in that way that all parents feel. John still gives Derek the stink-eye when he comes around the house, but he’s secretly glad that he’ll be heading down to Stanford with Stiles. The boy gets into so much trouble. It’ll be good that his super-powered boyfriend/mate/whatever is there to watch out for him. Melissa is worried about Scott following Allison, because how often do high school relationships make it in the long run? Hers certainly didn’t. But the way those two look at each other, it’s a love that’s tangible and so real that it’s scary and overwhelming but wonderful.

The boys are gone all too soon, and wasn’t it just yesterday that they were still in diapers, curled up in a playpen and sharing a blanket and teddy bear? It’s all happened too soon, but more than most parents, they have to admit that their sons are adults who have been dealing with real world consequences and life or death situations for years now.

It’s just lonely in those houses all alone.

The boys certainly don’t forget their parents. Scott Skypes with his mom when he really should be studying, and Stiles calls at odd hours every day to grill his dad about his dietary and exercise habits, and threatens to send one of the pack over to check to see if he’s lying—not that he needs to because John is pretty sure Stiles set up a town wide spy network before he left. They don’t wait for extended breaks to come home to visit, and welcome their parents coming up for a weekend any time (but, please, please call first). But all in all, it’s still lonely.

They start going out more often. It’s good for them, and they’ve always enjoyed their not-dates. And one day John realizes that he’s done it. He successfully raised Stiles without his wife. It has always been a fear of his, that he would fail the boy, not be able to protect him, not be able to nurture him as well as his mother had. Sure, Stiles has his problems. He’s too active, bouncing off walls with little ability to focus on one thing for long. But the kid makes his grades every time, he puts his nose to the grindstone when it needs it, and John has seen him with the pack in a crisis. He’s frighteningly competent at handling and directing them. And he’s already found the person he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. All in all, his son has grown up just fine.

And then, one night, after a long talk with the picture in the center of the mantel, he finally, after almost eight years, takes off his wedding ring.

Melissa, of course, notices right away, and she very subtle with her happiness that he’s finally accepted that it’s time to move on. And he’s known for a good long while that it’s been more than time. His wife would have his head on a platter to see how long he’s moped and drank and wallowed.

Neither is sure when it actually happens, but one day they realize that they spend more time with each other than with anyone else, and really, these not-dates are actually probably dates. They just look at each other and laugh. She gives him a lingering kiss to his cheek when he drops her off at her house.

It progresses from there. They go out to dinners and movies, and they stay home and order pizza and watch _I Love Lucy_ reruns. She brings him lunch—Stiles approved and overloaded with greens—on her way to the hospital, and he leaves flowers for her at the nurse’s station.

They wait to tell the boys until they come home for Spring Break. They arrive home within hours of each other, and one would think that they didn’t see each other constantly with the way Scott runs out the door yelling over his shoulder that he’s going to go get burgers with Stiles. Melissa warns him that they had better not be late for the dinner at the Stilinskis’ house.

The boys barely make it back in time. It’s by the skin of their teeth, but the food is still warm and the beer still cold, so they’re forgiven. It’s over a dessert of box brownies and ice cream—neither of them made any claims about being a baking prodigy—that they spill the beans.

The boys just stare at them.

“Is that a joke,” Scott asks.

“Not at all,” John says, reaching over to take Melissa’s hand. He sees Stiles’s gaze zero in on that, and then his son’s eyes widen. He’s very clearly noticed that the wedding ring isn’t there, and Stiles squeals.

Squeals.

And he hollers that he has no regrets when Scott calls him out on sounding like a pre-teen girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Then Stiles is up and around the table, flinging himself at his dad in excitement. He almost topples over the table, but John’s got pretty good Stiles related reflexes. He catches him, and Stiles proceeds to smother them both in a tight hug. And before they can blink, Scott is in there too.

The boys are excited and chatty, asking all kinds of questions about when this happened, _but no details, please, dear God!_

And when they leave a bit later to go meet up with the rest of the pack, after a hug, Scott mentions, “Lydia’s going to freak when we tell her.”

“Freak? Are you kidding,” Stiles laughs. “Her OTP gets together, and you think freak is a strong enough word to describe it?”

“Do we want to know what an OTP is and why we’re one,” Melissa leans over to ask John. He just shakes his head and just hopes it’s not a wolf thing.

``

They’ve been dating for just under a year—or dating where they both knew it was dating—when he asks her to marry him. The news again is shared over a family dinner, this time at Thanksgiving, and Stiles flails so hard that he falls completely ass over teakettle back out of his chair. “I think you broke him,” Derek comments, leaning back to see if any limbs are twisted the wrong way.

Melissa never once considered that someone who wasn’t related to her would insert themselves so much into the planning of the event, but, then again, she has known Lydia Martin since the girl was in kindergarten, and maybe she should have expected it.

According to Lydia, being Scott and Stiles’s parents makes Melissa and John sort of like honorary pack. If nothing else, they have full pack protection, and pack does things for each other. So Melissa just lets Lydia tell her which shades of ivory work best with her skin tone.

Because who even knew there were different shades of ivory.

The wedding is small but beautiful. Derek offers his renovated family home, which turned out absolutely gorgeous, as a location for the reception. Scott and Stiles wail dramatically in each other’s arms that they’re really brothers now, but John and Melissa notice some real tears there.

It’s sort of like a miracle, being this happy again. John never thought it would happen. He still loves his first wife, always will, but his new wife accepts that and seems to love him all the more for it. Melissa brings a new level of joy to his life, and it’s thanks to her that he thinks the laugh lines are finally going to outnumber the frown ones.

``

The baby is a surprise though. They stare at each other over the sink in the master bathroom. There’s a little blue plus sign on the strip of plastic balanced there. Really, they had taken it as sort of a joke, in a well-why-the-hell-not sort of way. Because Melissa’s had a stomach bug that doesn’t want to go away, and she’d mentioned being pregnant as joke. Um, apparently not.

“Maybe it’s menopause,” John suggests, his voice a little higher pitched than normal.

Melissa levels him with an unimpressed stare and asks, “Do you even know what menopause is?”

“I know it has to do with lady parts,” he says. “I didn’t ask questions after that.”

Melissa rolls her eyes. She will never not be simultaneously amused and annoyed at how, for as much as they like vaginas, men are terrified of the inner workings of the female reproductive system.

Telling their sons is a pretty interesting experience. They sit them down on the couch during their monthly weekend back at home, Derek and Allison sandwiching them in. Scott and Stiles both freeze up completely, and John is a little concerned and awed because he’s never seen Stiles go so still for so long. Allison leans back enough to catch Derek’s eyes over the boys’ backs, and she makes face that pretty well encompasses the word “oops.” Derek nods back, and he looks like he’s a couple of seconds away from poking Stiles to see if he’ll get a reaction.

Possibly no. Both boys have slack jaws and blank stares that indicate a lack of higher brain function.

Or, at least they do until Scott suddenly turns to Stiles—so suddenly that they all jump a bit—and hollers, “Dude! Your dad defiled my mom!”

Stiles flails a bit. “What,” he cries. “No, your mom seduced my dad!”

And then Scott grabs Stiles in a headlock, and Stiles does this incredibly complicated looking twisty, jerky movement that lets him get a good hold of Scott, and then they’re rolling around on the floor like they did when they were eight. Impressively, they manage to not hit the coffee table.

Derek and Allison both offer them a rather creepily simultaneous arch of their brows before turning back to the Stilinskis. “That’s wonderful news,” Allison says, standing up and moving to hug them.

“Congratulations,” Derek adds, shaking John’s hand and kissing Melissa’s cheek.

Behind the couch, Scott and Stiles are trying to see how many insults they can come up with that include the word douche.

``

The boys are actually really excited about their to-be sibling, if a little weirded out by the fact that they’re a full twenty-one years older. It takes them next to no time to blabber on and on about all the things they’ll do with the baby when it gets older. Scott goes on about baseball games and playgrounds and toy stores. Stiles can’t stop talking about amusement parks and superhero cartoons and tutus.

Stiles is sure it’s going to be a girl. Scott insists it’ll be a boy. Stiles is very smug and adds yet another tally mark to his mental Stiles Is Always Right And Should Never be Questioned List when they bring back word from the twenty week checkup. Lydia, Allison, and Erica, when he calls to let them know, squeal so loudly that he’s pretty sure they partially blow the speaker in his phone.

Melissa’s age has her listed as a high risk pregnancy, and so the boys are as close to hovering with her as they can be from hundreds of miles away. They not so subtly send Isaac and Erica by the house to check up on things a few times a week. Boyd brings casseroles that make John’s stomach turn, but Melissa can’t get enough of them.

One weekend, Lydia and Allison show up with a sour faced Jackson in tow, and suddenly the nursery is completely decorated.

“Easiest pregnancy ever,” Melissa comments from the couch, holding out a hand for her husband to high five.

``

Emily Louisa comes into the world far too early in the morning during the second week of June. Melissa’s labor pains start around breakfast, and while the boys are all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, she pours herself a glass of juice and settles into the couch with a book to wait for the contractions to get closer together.  

When she finally decides it’s time to go, Melissa has to laugh at the veritable caravan of cars going along with them. The entire pack is coming to make camp in the waiting room. The only ones who actually come into the room are John and the boys, who very resolutely clap their hands over their eyes and stumble around until they bodily crash into something near the top of the bed.

Melissa laughs at them, but they maintain a firm insistence they shouldn’t see anything of _that_ of a person who bought them Superman pull-ups, and they aren’t going to leave the purity of their eyes and brains up to a shoddy hospital blanket. And fair point. 

Pushing out this baby isn’t as horrible as it was with Scott. She had tried to put on a brave face for him and hold out on the medicine as long as possible. Turns out she had waited too late, and, yeah, natural childbirth is no one’s friend. So this time she orders up the epidural immediately and sits back to ride the wave.

When she comes, she’s a squirming mass of pink skin and dark hair, and boy, does she have some lungs on her. But she’s got the right number of fingers and toes, and she’s perfectly healthy and just so beautiful. After she’s been cleaned and fed, the boys come back, and they practically have to hold her together, because they both want to have her close all the time. John immediately snaps a few pictures.

The boys take their positions as big brothers very seriously, and they immediately make it their life’s mission to spoil their little sister rotten. She’s given every toy, every book, every blanket and gadget, and more clothes than she could ever wear in her life.

John insists that what they actually need is diapers, but Scott and Stiles are too lost in pink lace trimmed socks and yellow polka dot bows to hear him. Thank God for Allison and Derek, who bring diapers, wipes, and formula by the truckloads.

As Emmy grows, she’s joined by legions of werewolf nieces, nephews, and “cousins” as the pack expands. She’s got a disturbing propensity for getting into trouble, and Stiles and Scott do not look anywhere near innocent enough when their parents level them with stern glares. But she’s beautiful like her mother, smart and sweet like her brothers, and her wit comes all from her father.

When Christmas rolls around, the entire pack and its add-ons all pile into the Hale house. As John and Melissa watch their daughter herding around their grandchildren, wearing the little red hoodie that Stiles thinks is so hilarious, they think that this life is in no way something they ever considered a possibility. There had been a time not so long ago that they had all but resigned themselves to being alone for the rest of their lives. And sure, they aren’t going to be spending their retirements on a golf course the way they planned either, but they wouldn’t trade Emmy or the little cubs or any of the crazy supernatural weirdness for anything in the world. 


End file.
